Oil tanker spill threatens coastal areas in Greece’s capital

Oil tanker spill threatens coastal areas in Greece’s capital

A tanker carrying 2,500 tonnes of fuel sank off the island of Salamis on Sunday and local authorities rushed to tackle the contamination. But the spill has now started to spread to Athens’ coastal resort of Glyfada.

Greek officials fumbled their response to a minor oil spill that is now threatening beaches near Athens five days after the suspicious sinking of a tanker, environmental groups said Thursday.

“This leak happened near the country’s biggest harbour, just miles away from the operation centre of the ministry tasked with addressing such disasters,” Dimitris Ibrahim, campaign director at Greenpeace Greece, told news portal in.gr.

Adding insult to injury, the amount of oil in question was “relatively small,” Ibrahim said.

The oil spill on Sunday compromised beaches on the island of Salamis and officials were confident that it could be contained given mild wind conditions.

TRT World spoke with journalist Maria Kagkelidou in Athens.

But by Thursday, parts of the slick had drifted miles away to the Athens coastal resort of Glyfada and was threatening the popular beaches of Voula and Vouliagmeni.

WWF Greece was likewise incredulous that “a country with heavy tanker traffic has proven unable to protect its beaches from an initially small-scale incident.”

Workers clean a beach covered in oil that leaked from a small oil tanker that sank on September 10 off the shores of Salamina island, at the suburb of Faliro in Athens, Greece, September 14, 2017. (Reuters)

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